


under your spell

by karples



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Sleepovers, Teen Titans-era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:26:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9263516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karples/pseuds/karples
Summary: Roy isn't used to loving someone this much.





	

**Author's Note:**

> originally intended to be part of a longer roy-centric relationship study, but i decided to break it up and post what i liked in segments.
> 
> title taken from "under the spell" by springtime carnivore.

The Teen Titans had another late night, and Roy and Donna stumbled arm-in-arm down the glossy tar-black street and the jagged zipper of the curb, up the fire stairs to Ollie’s penthouse, flight by flight in the musty indoor air. Donna giggled in Roy’s embrace, so sleep-deprived that he was half-carrying her, reeled onward by an invisible thread and hook in his stomach.

“You can put me down,” Donna laughed, shoving at his shoulder, “Roy, put me down,” and instead Roy gallantly swept her off her feet, a ballroom spin. Donna shouted in delight as he sprinted the final steps and collapsed on Ollie’s welcome mat.

The cold bristles prickled against Roy’s neck. “Are you sure Green Arrow won’t mind?” Donna asked as Roy punched in the passcode, flat on his back.

“‘Course not,” Roy answered. Truth was, Ollie hadn’t been back in a while, so Roy had long stopped bracing himself for disappointment, waiting for permission that he’d never receive because Ollie wasn’t there. 

“C’mon in,” Roy said. “My house is your house, etcetera, etcetera.”

Donna’s silhouette in the yellow entryway cast a shadow like an eclipse over Roy’s heart. The door clicked shut. Roy kept the lights off; the grease stains on the sofa looked less suspicious in the dark.

“I guess I’ll stay on the couch?” Donna said, braving the silence.

“You can take my bed, I don’t mind,” Roy offered, but Donna shook her head. Roy shrugged. “Okay, then I’m out here with you.”

“Oh? What do you mean?”

“Whaddyou think?”

Roy trudged to his room, and Donna called after him, “I don’t know what to think. Roy?” He returned with a plush sleeping bag, a blanket, and two pillows, and Donna said, “Oh no, no, you don’t have to.”

“Sure I do, it’s not a sleepover if we’re not in the same room.”

“Says who?”

In wordless retaliation, Roy smothered her with the blanket, and Donna laughed in her low warm voice, like she really liked him, liked Roy, liked to lean into him and swat him in the face with a cushion and initiate a vicious, if brief, pillow fight.

They ended up sweatier and more disheveled than before. Donna tilted sideways, smiling, breathing hard, nostrils flared. The bright red hem of her Wonder Girl tunic peeked out from behind the lapel of her rumpled trenchcoat, and her gleaming lasso lay curled on the coffee table between a half-filled mug of water and protein bar wrappers. If she looped her lasso around Roy’s wrist, compelled him to speak, what would he confess?

Drowsy, Donna started rambling about anything, everything, and Roy tried to trace her leaps of logic from point of origin to crest. He could count her eyelashes, even the hairs of her arching brows--was that weird? She was staggeringly pretty, magnified by their proximity.

He didn’t want to break her heart, that was what Roy would say. Donna could soar impossible distances, ever upward, and throw eighteen-wheelers farther than Roy could shoot an arrow, but Roy didn’t want to break her heart. He could if he tried. She was so good, _too_ good, and she was so, so close. The top of her head under his chin, her breath on his shoulder.

“And the hardest part is not knowing if you know someone--really, truly know someone, you know?” Donna was saying. “To be saturated with the knowledge of someone, to know it’s true--it’s impossible to tell, right? If it’s true?” She glanced at Roy and grinned, slowly, as if dazed. “Should I go to sleep now?”

“Probably,” Roy agreed, though he could’ve listened to her talk all night. He disentangled himself. The gradual loss of her warmth--transferred to other molecules, dissipating in the frigid air--left him sour and irrationally bitter. He wanted to turn on the heat, but couldn’t bring himself to move much further. Donna floored him, bowled him over; his chest felt caved-in, sugar glass crushed underfoot.

Donna stretched an arm over her head and let the other dangle off of the couch. Something gentle and aching in Roy lurched toward her, falling without reservation. “G’night, Xena, Warrior Princess,” he said.

Donna cracked a yawn. “I don’t know who that is...”

“Well, I’ve got recordings, and we’ve got all of tomorrow...”

“Roy...”

“What? I’m just sayin’.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“Sounds great right now. Might sound even better in the morning.” Roy squirmed into his sleeping bag, conscious of the disciplined grace that underscored Donna’s every gesture--a result of her training, moreso than some unattainable quality present in her and not in him, but still Roy wondered. Their differences seemed vast and insurmountable, no different in moonlight than in daylight.

When Roy brushed Donna’s knuckles with his hand, the sticky-sweet tang of Amazonian ambrosia tingled in his nose, and Donna murmured incoherently before slipping into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> one of donna's lines references a moment in the titans (1999)! i'm too lazy to dig up the issue but it's in the arc with goth satan.


End file.
